LATEST ‘THEME NIGHT’ ON PBS ANATHEMA TO SOME

The idea of public TV’s experimental “Theme Night,” its producer has explained, is to offer sort of an electronic Op Ed page, to air admittedly partisan films in which opposing sides on a major issue state their case as they see it.

Last week, a “Theme Night” special itself sparked debate in public television circles. The 2 1/2-hour program concerned the long, bitter struggle between Palestinians and Israelis over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip within Israel’s borders.

Called “Flashpoint--Israel and the Palestinians,” it aired on 274 public television stations, including KCET (Channel 28) in Los Angeles, which made its own three-hour version of the program.

But neither New York’s WNET, serving the nation’s largest television market, nor WETA in Washington, aired “Flashpoint” at all, saying that it offered nothing new, lacked sufficient context, and just wasn’t balanced enough.

“I think they were very nervous about the subject,” said Beverly Ornstein, producer of the “Theme Night” series, a three-program, $380,000 effort funded by the Public Broadcasting Service and made by San Francisco’s KQED-TV.

Her special contained two Israeli films, “Two Settlements,” made in 1983, and “Peace Conflict,” made in 1979, and, from the other side, a 1981 film, “Occupied Palestine,” that gave the Palestinian viewpoint on living under and resisting Israeli rule.

Yes, Ornstein said, “These are partisan films. But the idea is to create a balanced forum in which partisan voices can be heard. Naturally, each side will feel what the other side says is biased and full of distortions.

“The trick is to create a broadcast in which each side can have its say, unfiltered by a journalist. It’s something like the Op Ed page of the air.”

Each “Flashpoint” film was prefaced by short introductory remarks by KQED reporter Stephen Talbot. At the start of the show, he identified two of the films as “Israeli-made” and the third as made by “film makers sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.”

In his opening remarks, he also emphasized the idea of “Theme Night”--”to create a kind of ‘free speech television,’ to allow strongly partisan voices a chance to be heard . . . and to present viewpoints not often found on American television.

“We hope it (“Flashpoint”) will stimulate your own thinking about the Middle East and perhaps challenge some of your own perceptions and assumptions.”

However, after top editorial executives at New York’s WNET saw the program, there was “unanimous consent” that the station shouldn’t broadcast it, said WNET Vice President George Miles.

“We felt that the program was not well-rounded,” he said. “They had film clips that were old and dated, and it (the show in general) did not give a fair, balanced presentation.”

For the same reason WNET didn’t air the first “Theme Night” special on abortion last September, he added. Although the pro-Palestinian segment of “Flashpoint” has been sharply criticized by the American Jewish Committee, neither such criticism nor fears of a backlash from New York’s large Jewish community played any part in WNET’s decision not to air the program, Miles said.

“When you serve all ethnic groups as we do in New York, you can’t cater to just one group. We’re just trying to put balanced programs on the air.”

WETA’s refusal to air “Flashpoint” (it was shown in Washington by a secondary PBS station at Howard University) prompted a letter of protest from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination League, which has helped arrange a screening of it, scheduled for Tuesday, on Capitol Hill.

WETA Vice President Gerald Slater defended his station’s decision. “There was nothing new that came out of those films,” he said. He contended that issues raised by them have often been explored on “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,” which WETA co-produces.

And, he said, WETA officials felt that the “wraparounds”--Talbot’s explanatory comments about the program’s films--”weren’t very good” and didn’t provide enough context, particularly for “Occupied Palestine.”

But the publicity over the stations’ refusal to air the program clearly has had an effect.

Both Slater and Miles said that their stations currently are discussing ways to come up with programs that would, as Miles put it, “present these issues in a more balanced manner.”

The stations that did air “Flashpoint” had two options--to simply show it as is, or to “localize” it, to make its own version. KCET took the latter course, with one of its own news producers, Jeffrey Kaye, introducing and explaining each film.

Although KCET aired “Occupied Palestine,” it dropped “Peace Conflict” because it felt that the 7-year-old program was of poor technical quality and “not up-to-date enough,” said KCET spokeswoman Barbara Goen.

It substituted for that film a 1983 Israeli-perspective program, “Israel and the Palestinians: The Continuing Conflict,” she said, and also added a rerun of “The Arab and the Israeli,” made in 1984 by PBS’ “Frontline” series.

Goen said that the PBS documentary was added “because we thought it offered a better over-view, was more up to date, and was a more complete look at the issue.”

Despite the controversy in New York and Washington over “Flashpoint,” she said, there was not much uproar from Los Angeles viewers when KCET aired it last Wednesday night. Only 28 calls came in, 21 of them to protest the broadcast, seven to praise it, she said.

On Thursday morning, KCET got 21 more calls from viewers, of which 20 were positive, she added. In contrast, she said, when the station aired an AIDS special several weeks ago, 170 viewers called in to praise or protest it.

“To tell the truth, the reaction (to “Flashpoint”) was less than we anticipated,” Goen said. “It generated far less controversy in Los Angeles than in New York.”